Free Tools to Recover Deleted Files
There is almost nothing worse than losing important files when you experience a finger fumble, brain freeze, or computer crash. But never fear, there are tools that can help you recover those lost files, and some of the best ones are free... |
How To Recover Deleted Files - For Free
So you lost an important file. Ouch. If you simply deleted the wrong file, you can usually get it back by opening the Recycle Bin (on Windows) and restoring it. On a Mac, you'll look in the Trash Bin. Linux users, check the Trash folder. The happy secret here is that in most cases, deleted files really aren't gone at all. They're just moved into the Recycle/Trash bucket, and can be restored to their original folders with a few clicks. But if that doesn't do the trick, try one of these free tools to do the heavy lifting. Read on and you'll find a crop of tools to recover deleted files.
Piriform's Recuva (pronounced like "recover" with a Brooklyn accent) will help you to find files and images on your Windows computer that were deleted by human error, including those deleted from your digital camera memory card or MP3 player. Recuva can also restore files deleted from the recycle bin or those that were deleted by a bug, virus or crash. This is a free Windows application that includes a support forum and because it is a freebie, Piriform would appreciate a small donation if you like their software. Recuva comes from the same people that developed the popular CCleaner, so the reputation is rock solid.
PhotoRec is a free undelete utility for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Despite the name, it can recover almost 400 different file formats (not just photos) including ZIP, Office (Word/Excel/Powerpoint), PDF, HTML, TXT, and JPEG. Photorec can recover files from a variety of media, including hard drives, CD/DVDs, digital camera memory cards, and USB flash drives. It can also be used with portable devices (including the iPod) and many digital cameras. Photorec doesn't even require that the drive be partitioned, formatted or mounted with a drive letter.
Recover Files 2.1 is a free professional software tool that allows you to recover data removed from your hard drive, recycle bin, portable devices or even a compact flash drive. This Windows-based utility is compatible with Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/Win7 and will recover lost files from all NTFS and FAT partitions with a simple interface. The award winning software has recently been updated to repair some bugs and added 11 languages. Register on their site before downloading.
More Data Recovery Tools
Another popular free file recovery tool for Windows is Restoration. This program will find just about everything you've ever deleted from your PC, including files deleted from the DOS prompt. When the program starts, choose a source drive, then click the "Search Deleted Files" button. If you have a file on your hard drive with the same name, restore the file to a different folder, or flash disk so that your existing file is not wiped out. Restoration can also permanently delete files, making it almost impossible to restore or undelete them. Restoration has a no-frills user interface, but it's easy to use and does a good job.
One unique feature of Restoration is that you don't have to install it before running. This is a good thing, because installing a program will write to the disk from which you're trying to restore your deleted files, and this could possibly trample the very data you want to recover. I recommend that you download Restoration to a USB flash drive, then just double-click the .EXE file, and the program will open. Note that on Vista or Windows 7, you might see a message that you need administrator privileges to run Restoration. The fix is simple -- just right-click on the .EXE file and choose "RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR".
FreeUndelete has no charge for personal usage, although they charge for businesses. The program is spyware and adware free, works on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, and can restore files from your Recycle Bin or NTFS, FAT32 or FAT16 hard drives. Once recovered, they will be saved in a new user-selected location to prevent overwriting files.
There are also free tools for other types of data disasters. Advanced PSD Repair (APSR) is handy for recovering Photoshop PSD and PDD files and works with all versions.
And if you work with external media, Recovery Toolbox for CD Free can recover data from damaged or corrupted CD, DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs. The same company also makes a variety of other data recovery tools, including Recovery Toolbox for Outlook, Outlook Express, Word, Excel, Zip and other applications to recover damaged or deleted data. They're not free, but you can get a free trial to see if it'll do the job.
For Mac users, Data Rescue is supposed to be very good, but not free.
Do it Now...
Obviously, all of these tools are most useful if you install them BEFORE you lose the data, because downloading a file can possibly overwrite the very file(s) you want to recover. I recommend that you check out a few and download them to a flash drive or other portable storage, so you'll be ready in case you do need to recover lost files. Oh, and did I mention that if you backup your hard drive, you won't need ANY of these tools? :-)
Do you have a favorite deleted file recovery tool? Have you tried any of the above? Post a comment below and let us know...
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Posted by Bob Rankin on 27 Sep 2012
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Article information: AskBobRankin -- Free Tools to Recover Deleted Files (Posted: 27 Sep 2012)
Source: http://askbobrankin.com/free_tools_to_recover_deleted_files.html
Copyright © 2005 - Bob Rankin - All Rights Reserved
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Most recent comments on "Free Tools to Recover Deleted Files"
Posted by:
Antwahn
27 Sep 2012
Which one of these would work for an external hard drive that became corrupted... I have like 5-600 gigs of stuff I need to recover! Please Help!
Posted by:
Louis Paul Toscano
27 Sep 2012
I have such a tool that I purchased for a nominal price in order to recover corrupted text files on a floppy. If that doesn't work, the manufacturer has an online service where the owner can submit the files and they will recover them for you. Its called DocRepair Recovery.
Posted by:
Beverly Chapin
27 Sep 2012
Brain freeze is right! Was working on external drive (backup) and goofed. Left desktop running, moved to laptop and downloaded Recuva from Piriform (full confidence in their programs after using CCleaner for years) and they now have new Recuva that runs from USB drive without being installed on computer. Worked like a charm! Now I'm going to donate to help keep them providing these wonderful free tools toward day I may need help but not have the funds.
Posted by:
MartÃn
28 Sep 2012
Bob, a question: Recovery tools to use with Knoppix? I have a computer that doesn't start up, and I know I can use Knoppix to boot and work... but I need to recover some deleted files from that computer. Any suggestions?
Posted by:
Snert
28 Sep 2012
These are going on my 'Disaster' flash drive.
Posted by:
Vale56
28 Sep 2012
Hi Bob,
I am a long time user of Recuva and it suits me quite well, but I have also to admit that I've always been too lazy (and not so in trouble) to check if some other of the proposed tools was effectively working when Recuva failed. Only one remark to your article: it's not a unique feature of Restoration to be a portable application, also Recuva has a portable build downloadable from http://www.piriform.com/recuva/builds.
Regards
Posted by:
ALYN
29 Sep 2012
New User: Today I downloaded your system. Easy.
Now, how do I pick out just the files I want to keep.
Then, how do I erase the "trash?"
Thirdly: how do I move the good stuff to a different file ? And then--Am I not just overloading my computer? I have thousands of pix in my files.) HELP.
Posted by:
vijay
09 Oct 2012
i want to retrieve the files which i cut and paste to another folder location where already the same file name exits ,i gave yes to all for the following message.
The filealready contain a folder named 156A_1. If the files in the existing folder have the same name as files in the folder you are movinf or copying they will be replaced,do you still move or copy the folder?
For the baove msg i gave yes to all and more than 14000 files moved finalyy total files i got is 11000,can you please tell me how to retrieve the remaing 3000 files as it is replaced.
Note:All the files have different sizes, names alone remain same, pls help me ASAP.
Posted by:
John V. Brennan
15 Oct 2012
Good Day! I hope you're enjoying a pleasant one. "Recover Files" is not Free. It's a 30 Day trial. It has File Size Limitations and will prompt you to purchase if the File Size is beyond the Free Trial Limitation. Don't waste your time. Plenty of other Truly Free, Freeware, No Gags, No Ads, and Better Progams available.
I'm now going to use my FREE Uninstall Utility from IOBit to remove it from my hard drive. Checkout the IOBIt Uninstall Utility before you install any more garbage. It will uninstall your junk, and you have the ability to do a "DeeP" scan, to get rid of all the other misc. junk, not usually removed by a standard uninstall.
Posted by:
Linda Delaney
17 Oct 2012
Hello I am planning to give my older computer to my grandson but I want to remove everything On it before I do is there a n easy way to do this?
Posted by:
Linda Delaney
17 Oct 2012
Good afternoon I am having a problem backing up my computer I am running Verizon back up and I keep getting a message it can not complete the backup because a file is missing or corrupted. I have no idea what it is talking about and what file it is missing How can I find out?
Posted by:
questd4
18 Oct 2012
When I lost a few MS Word 2010 documents while transferring them to the USB drive, I was able to recover lost Word document 2010 by using file recovery software. We can download the trial version initially from the website and preview the recovered data before saving.
Posted by:
mchoff
19 Oct 2012
Nowadays it's easy to recover lost data, I have lost all my project documents which are in .Doc format. I was frustrated and had question at that time that,how to recover deleted word files? But very soon I got a solution and I used the Windows recovery software. If you are also facing the data loss problem from Windows OS then you can download the free demo version of the software and you can recover the lost data.
Posted by:
kevinbadpit
06 Nov 2012
One can easily recover deleted word files windows 7 or any other type of file by making use of such recovery tools. Its very simple tool and fast recovery application.
Posted by:
Sarah Smith
28 Nov 2012
Great list of tools. I have not used these personally but these can be helpful for a needy one. Apart from these tool I know about one more tool from Stellar which recovers deleted emails along with additional feature of PST file recovery. More details about this tool can be found at this blog repair-pst.blogspot.com/ . In case any of the above mentioned tools do not meet the requirement then this tool can be a good option.
Posted by:
Devillers
15 Jan 2013
Hello Friend,
Thank you for a such an informative article. Hope I had found this page site when I had this situation. I compressed all my important files into ZIP format, in order to have all the multiple files in a single file, but few days before I erased the ZIP file by mistake and was frustrated. However I was able to do ZIP data recovery with the help of a software called Yodot File Recovery. For more info about the product follow the below link
http://www.yodot.com/file-recovery/zip-recovery.html